Mitt Romney's Identity Crisis

Who can forget the 1975 classic film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” starring Jack Nicholson? Remember? The one where Nicholson fakes being mentally unstable in order to leave prison and enter into an insane asylum? Despite his best efforts to appear crazy, Nicholson’s character, Randle McMurphy, is entirely sane. Yet he puts on a show so that he can avoid the hard labor of prison and serve the rest of his sentence in a more relaxed hospital environment. In order to accomplish his objective of staying out of jail, he must act like something he’s not - a clinically insane patient. The movie ends tragically when the head nurse, Nurse Ratched, lobotomizes McMurphy, and one of his fellow patients suffocates him to death with a pillow. After viewing this film again recently, I couldn’t help but notice the glaring similarities between it and the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney.

For his entire life, Mitt Romney has been a proud liberal Republican from Massachusetts. He has championed individual mandates in healthcare, earmarks, gay rights, abortion rights, and yes, even contraception mandates for religious institutions. However, in less than a decade, Romney has shifted his position on nearly every major issue for political expediency. Much like Nicholson’s character in the film, Romney feels the need to act like an entirely different person to accomplish his objective – winning the Republican nomination for President. Like Nicholson, Romney must appear more radical and unstable to fit in with his fellow candidates. And like Nicholson, if Romney shows even a smidgen of authenticity and normalcy, he will lose all hope of achieving his goal. In other words, Mitt Romney can’t be Mitt Romney if he wants to win the Republican nomination.

It is no secret that Republican voters do not like Romney. Yet many have considered him the favorite to win the nomination from the very beginning. Romney has run the most professional campaign of any GOP candidate this year, and he has raised more money than any of his fellow competitors. Yet he still hasn’t been able to clinch the nomination. In any other year, a polished, well-funded, and experienced candidate such as Romney would waltz to the nomination. But this isn’t any other year.

Prior to launching his campaign, Romney (and most political observers) knew that his moderate record would enable him to run the most competitive race against President Obama in the general election. The trick was always getting to the general election. Now, more than any other time in history, the Republican Party is made up of purists, ideologues, and unforgiving paranoid extremists. The Republican Party of 2012 is allergic to the thought of nominating a moderate – no matter how many times Romney and the Republican establishment try to convince them otherwise.          

But now Mitt Romney is taking on a new strategy. He’s exchanging the moderate playbook for one that is hyper-conservative – one that makes the Republican establishment incredibly uncomfortable. He’s now calling himself “severely conservative” and his bizarre hyperbole towards President Obama is at an all-time high. Romney is starting to sound more like Michele Bachmann than the once self-described “progressive” from Massachusetts.

The problem is that Mitt Romney is a terrible liar. Deep down most people know that Romney is saying these things merely to win the nomination. If he can manage to do that, who knows which Mitt Romney we’ll see in the general election? Republican voters understand this. And because of this insight, they simply don’t trust him. And who could? Like Romney, Jack Nicholson’s character was self-centered, self-interested, and narcissistic. He knew that the mental institution was only temporary. He just had to fake it long enough, and the fool enough people, and he’d be set free. Romney sees the Republican nomination the exact same way.

Democrats are clamoring at the opportunity to run against Mitt Romney. Trust me, I’m one of them. We would love nothing more than to run against a candidate who believes in absolutely nothing. But it seems as if Republican voters are finally waking up. And as we saw in that classic movie, an impostor's charade can go on for only so long. Then comes Nurse Ratched.

Tyler Jones is a Democratic political strategist based in Charleston. He is the co-founder and Executive Director of SC Forward Progress and the former Executive Director of the South Carolina House Democratic Caucus.